There is a mixture of arguments with regard to this.


Firstly, life has been very hard on the Black Watch. After going from Germany to the battle for Basra, they had been moved to Warminster (the British Army's School of Infantry) for what they thought would be a nice long tour. Plenty of time to recruit and train, and for the soldiers to spend time with their families. Instead they are now on their second tour in Iraq. As the reserve battlegroup for the British-led Multi-National Division (South), they were the obvious choice to go to any hot spot, but it is also a tribute to their level of training and experience as an armoured infantry formation.

The Black Watch have declared that their aim is to try and make friends with the local population. They intend to patrol in low-key fashion, wearing their Tam O'Shanter headgear, rather than helmets for example. I think this may be optimistic. Now I don't want to be rude to the US Armed Forces, but it does appear that they have really worked at annoying the population of Iraq. When I see US Soldiers in Iraq on television, it seems that they have all gone for the Robocop look; full armour, festooned with hi-tech gadgets, with dark glasses so that no human emotion can be seen on the few centimetres of face visible.

It would be difficult for any Iraqi, however grateful for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, to empathise with such an army of robots, and vice versa. I suspect that by now, the various resistance movements (Sunni Moslems, Saddam Hussein loyalists or whatever) won't view more easy-going troops as friends, but as more vulnerable targets.

The worry about the risks will be deeply felt, not only in the Black Watch's own military community, but in their very close-knit recruiting area (North Fife and Perthshire). This is one drawback of the British Army's regimental system, in which units are recruited from small areas in Britain, with deep roots and strong local feeling. It gives units great cohesion, but disproportionate losses to any unit (such as the disaster suffered by the Welsh Guards at Bluff Cove in 1982) affect the community they were drawn from in much the same way.




The argument about the possible disbandment is a concurrently rumbling dispute. It is unfortunate that the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, is a bumptious and unmilitary solicitor (lawyer), and the proposed reforms can be seen as amateur meddling. The Defence Chiefs are supporting the general aim, which is to have four strong Scottish line infantry units rather than five overstretched ones.

However, to achieve the reorganisation, one Scottish unit (and three English units) will have to go, losing their regimental history and traditions. This isn't the first time that this has happened. The Cardwell reforms in the 1870's which carried out similar amalgamations, caused the same wailing and gnashing of teeth. However, the Cardwell reforms also stopped lots of cruel and inhumane anachronisms, and many units trace their true history back only as far as Cardwell.

Many amalgamations have been carried out since 1969, which have sometimes resulted in a regiment with good identity with its new recruiting area (such as the Royal Anglian Regiment, raised in the eastern counties). Other amalgamations have produced a nebulous mess.